D E E P  S P A C E

OUR RELATIVES FROM THE COSMOS

Intelligent life in the universe may be more common than one might think, since in the current universe there are countless galaxies, each with hundreds of thousands of stars like our sun and planets that orbit them, which leads to The existence of these extrasolar beings is highly probable, but what could they be like? Our relatives in the cosmos could be very related to us both physically and genetically, except with some small differences depending on the planet on which they have evolved, this suggests that there could be a high physical and genetic compatibility almost in its entirety. Now the hypotheses of intelligent beings of unknown appearance should be discarded, as well as intelligent beings with more than four limbs and exaggerated features, this specific selection drafts the physical truth of their existence, now we can think that they could be more familiar and perhaps their genetics may be compatible with ours, it is only a question that at some remote time we can find them and discover their greatest mysteries as the intelligent extrasolar beings that they are. After all even aliens come from stardust just like us.

With such a large universe I can guarantee that in some region of the cosmos there is life, and the question would no longer be, if we are alone, but rather, where they are."  
J.M

      FUTURE ON MARS

Humanity is a short time away from being able to take the first human to Mars in the next few years, this would be the first major advance in being able to make interplanetary trips with people on board, in which, beyond being able to get there for the first time, it is being able to plant humanity there permanently in the future. This advance requires many factors to take into account, such as creating a space base with all the comforts that will later be expanded to a small city and be ready to settle the first humans on another world. But we know that humanity plans to go far, with this ambitious project in a very distant period of time, it is proposed to terraform the planet, turning it like Earth, where through carbon dioxide emissions that are artificially expelled, they heat the atmosphere of Mars, and with the help of the sun, its temperature can be regulated to a climate more similar to that of Earth, also achieving a suitable temperature to melt the ice and form lakes, seas and rivers on 30% of the planet's surface. With the right technology, we can begin to create the first flora ecosystems that will allow us to generate oxygen in the atmosphere and begin to create environments similar to those of a habitable world that provide food for survival and create fertility on the planet so that it is habitable for the first colony, turning us into a Type 2 civilization. Now it is only a matter of how long the human race can survive in the next centuries or millennia to achieve something of astronomical dimensions.

We are now in the era of technological advances, which allow us to emerge as the advanced civilization that we are; and now in space exploration, humanity has always planned to colonize Mars, but this only depends on how much life expectancy the human race can have in order not to become extinct and to be able to establish the first cities on the neighboring planet."  
J.M

          FUTURE DISTANT

Time will always be there so that, through it, we can observe the past and present of the universe. We now understand the behavior of the cosmos to know what the future of the universe will be. After billions of years on a cosmic scale, we will see activity in the galaxy. Thousands of stars will exhaust their energy reserves and explode as supernovae, annihilating every planet and the life forms that exist near them, which will cause the extinction of planets and entire solar systems. After another billion years, the gas in stellar and planetary nebulae will condense and disappear into the vacuum of space. The only thing we would be able to see in that remote time would be the black holes and the white and red dwarfs of the galaxies. These stars can last up to 100 billion years, and only the possible civilizations that could survive the cataclysm of their stars would settle on a planet near the dwarf stars, trying to survive with the energy they obtain until the end of time. But even so, far into the future, the longest-lasting stars in the universe will slowly go out, blackouts will condense, galaxies will disappear, and the matter and energy of the cosmos will be exhausted after an eternity of time, giving rise to a cold, empty universe where space-time itself collapses and ceases to exist forever, leaving absolutely nothing instead of something. Possibly, this will occur to give rise to a new creation, a new universe. Perhaps the universe is an endless cycle where it is born, grows, and dies as a natural process of its own existence.

The universe is infinite, just as the possibilities are limitless."   
J.M

           ARTIFICIAL PLANET

Since humankind began exploring space, they have aspired to go ever further, thinking of being able to migrate completely from Earth to settle on a new world, which could be a neighboring planet, an extrasolar planet, or an artificial planet. Now we are beginning to question the advances in space technology and the timeframes for achieving this feat of space engineering. The greatest challenge in achieving these projects lies in the type of technology we currently have and what we can afford and take for granted. If the life expectancy of the human race were like that of animal species that lived in the past for millions of years, in that period and with sufficiently advanced technology, in only less than 20 million years would the human race have enough time to live on an artificial planet, built by itself, where all ecosystems would adapt to its inhabitants, with an oxygen-rich atmosphere that would generate climates like those on Earth, mountains, seas, rivers, and cities in a world that could sustain itself with the technologies that might emerge in millions of years. But to achieve this kind of spatial advancement, man must first begin by building the first space habitat to understand animal and plant behavior in an environment unknown to life. Now, what is the product of science fiction may be closer to the reality we live in, just as a space rocket would be to a caveman.

 Will humanity exist long enough to reach that level of technology?

      SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION

Millions of years have passed since the last mass extinction, which wiped out 75% of living species, including the dinosaurs. These cataclysms seem to occur at intervals of millions of years, allowing new surviving species to survive and emerge in new environments, allowing life to recover and repopulate the planet in thousands of years. It seems that, despite the five mass extinctions that occurred in the past, life has managed to recover and return to normal, with survival being a rare phenomenon in situations that brought life almost to the brink of total extinction, in which it would never appear again on Earth. Today, in the 21st century, we see how humanity has thrived since the emergence of humans 4 million years ago. We tend to live calmly, but we are still not immune to what could happen at any moment. Millions of years have passed since the last cataclysm, so we are probably close to another one, perhaps in the same way. Threats come from space, from different bodies such as asteroids (70%), comets (15%), and probably supernovae (0.5%). These catastrophic phenomena are the most likely to occur per million years. Now, we ourselves can be the threat or danger to our species and the Earth. We have left our mark on the planet in recent years, and the Earth is now going through a critical moment generated for the first time by any species. Finally, the most dangerous potential that humanity has generated is nuclear weapons, with devastating destructive power. If humanity is smart enough not to use them, we will continue to live until a natural phenomenon, either on Earth or in space, extinguishes us, and our extinction is natural. If we become extinct soon, we will go down in history as the only species on Earth with the shortest lifespan.

 How much life expectancy will the human race have?,  Will we live like the ancient forms of life that existed for millions of years?,  Will we progress as a civilization? 

             LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 

Life in the universe seems a mystery, as we still don't know if it can only arise here on Earth. Even so, we remain alone in the cosmos until we can find companionship somewhere in the universe; we don't know for sure yet. Only now can we hypothesize about its existence based on the study of life on Earth. We know that all organisms on the planet are perfectly adapted to the ecosystems that surround them, whether arid or polar environments. This allows us to understand that an organism cannot live in all places on Earth, but only in a specific one, and that is the one to which the species is best adapted. Only now can we study microorganisms as possible candidates for existence in a certain region of the cosmos, as some of these creatures adapt well to diverse extreme environments. Only life can spread in different places in the universe. If an asteroid falls on a planet with a diversity of species and causes a large impact, pulverizing the surface and sending rocks into space as a result of the impact, these rocks, which harbor resilient soil microorganisms, will be projected into the air. Space and travel through it, so that in hundreds, thousands, or perhaps millions of years, they fall on other worlds in the form of meteorites, thus piercing the atmosphere and penetrating it, eventually falling to the surface as a rock laden with microorganisms that can fertilize the planet and generate life there, in a process that extends like a chain reaction through the galaxies that provide stars and planets. Perhaps this is how Earth was fertilized in the past, with microorganisms from other distant worlds so that life could be generated. 

No matter where you look, the cosmos is a hive of life, the raw numbers speak for themselves, no matter how pessimistic we want to be, it is inevitable to think that we are alone in a universe full of infinite possibilities." 
J.M

             STARS

When a cloud of molecular gas containing hydrogen begins to form due to the gravity it possesses due to the presence of matter and energy, it begins to clump together in one or more regions. The gas then begins to heat up, and the matter begins to form spheres of compressed gas that fuse and produce helium through nuclear fusion. Then, when the temperature reaches 10 million degrees, the newly formed star is finally born. After a period of a few million years, some stars that possess enough matter begin to form planets, asteroids, moons, and stardust as a result of the stellar remnants of their formation, which will give rise to a planetary system. Over time over a period of 10 billion years, some stars like the sun will age moderately, others will age faster or slower depending on their mass, and will die and exhaust their reserves of hydrogen and helium, and some will expand as a red giant, becoming 300 times larger than usual, so that at that stage, their gases dissipate into space, becoming a planetary nebula, and others will explode as supernovae in which the remains of a dead star are reflected; finally millions of years later, a small star called a white dwarf forms in its center or a black hole or neutron star will form depending on the type of star that will finally last billions of years until the end of the universe. This will be the same stage that the Sun will go through in a period of 5 billion years, its destiny being a planetary nebula to posthumously pass into a white dwarf and be a cold and dying cave in space.

Can we appreciate the death of the sun for that remote time?  o Will be humanity extinct by the time the big event occurred? 

         COSMIC THREAT

The cosmos is a very dangerous place, as various astrophysical phenomena are active, posing a significant threat to nearby astronomical bodies, especially inhabited ones, such as planets. The most common threats are asteroids and meteorites, which constantly travel through space in search of other bodies to collide with. These bodies are the most constant threat to planets. Any collision with a planet, star, or asteroid could alter the orbit of this rock, causing it to subsequently travel toward and collide with a planet. We now know that comets travel through space in a specific orbit, and only if the orbit is altered by another body can they change their trajectory and collide with another, as was the case with the comet that collided with Jupiter. Phenomena with greater physical activity represent an even greater danger, although they are usually distant. Stars are bodies that have so much energy that at the end of their life cycle they end up exploding as supernovae or hypernovae, releasing enormous amounts of energy, such that any planetary system that was close to the star would end up affected due to the explosion, but even so, there are bodies with more energetic power that exist in our galaxy, these are black holes, they have so much mass and such enormous gravity that they are capable of swallowing entire stars, as well as everything they find in their path. We now know that gamma ray bursts are a type of star that explodes sending two axes of light and radioactive energy to the sides, these would be lethal, since if they reached a planet that was less than 800 light years away, they would impact it with a strong bath of radiation, pulverizing and exterminating any type of life that was there. Fortunately, the Earth is currently safe from such large-scale cataclysms. Although in the past, the Earth and life have been able to survive events that occurred. 66 million years ago, an asteroid collided with our planet. However, this was not the most serious event that occurred. We must remember that more than 400 million years ago, a star near our solar system exploded, bathing the Earth in radioactive energy, extinguishing the species of the Ordovician-Silurian period.

Taking into account that the existence of intelligent life in Cosmos is very likely. 

Can the longest-lived civilizations in the universe survive such cataclysms?

       EXTRASOLAR ECOSYSTEM 

Outside of Earth we can share extrasolar environments, which may well be both similar and strange, just depending on which star the planets orbit, we can know what type of possible ecosystem we can find in them, we know that our mother star is a star. type G2, that is, an average yellow star, which through it generates both life and the ecosystems that provide it, therefore here on Earth the vegetation is given green due to the energy of the sun, which through reactions Chemicals like photosynthesis allow green pigment into the ecosystem. A planet whose parent star is a type M red dwarf, which gives off infrared energy, would present a very different ecosystem from that of Earth, since this planet would receive very weak energy from its star, therefore the vegetation on this planet could be plants. black in color because the rays of its star are infrared, which would allow ecosystems such as deserts with few darkly pigmented plants and which may also contain ecosystems with fungi, the size of trees. 

Do we really discover paradises of life outside our planet that we can call a second home?

           HUMAN RACE 

For the human race to have evolved sufficiently and become what we are today, an advanced intelligent civilization, it has taken an average of 4 billion years of evolution since the first microorganisms settled on Earth. We continue to evolve, as does the universe, but even more disturbing is how technology, in its various forms, has been able to innovate on a larger scale in such a short time. In space exploration alone, we have sent dozens of probes, telescopes, shuttles, and robots to explore space. These technological tools are increasingly innovative and advanced. We now know that our civilization will take two of the next steps for humanity: the arrival of humans on Mars and the discovery of life possibly in our solar system. But if we look to the future, over a longer period, the human race will have made incomprehensible advances and will be ever closer to reaching a new level of civilization in terms of technological advancement. Currently, we harness the energy of our star and that of our planet; We played with nuclear energy for the survival of our cities, built metropolises with the tallest skyscrapers, and explored space. The next stage of our humanity's advancement here on Earth will be travel to the stars and planetary systems, harnessing the sun's energy on a massive scale and building the first plasma- and antimatter-powered ships, and possibly time travel. Of course, to achieve this, at least a few centuries or perhaps millennia will have to pass. This depends on the speed of technological development. We could now deduce that the greatest technological advancement humanity can achieve will take millions of years to build and would involve the first ecosystem on an artificial ring-shaped planet where life can be sustained. This would only happen if humanity's life expectancy reaches millions of years to manage it. Let's remember that for a caveman back then, a space rocket was just a science fiction thing, and this is what's happening now, and scientific advances for the present and future.

As a planetary civilization that we are, I only hope that we learn to manage our world, and that we realize our mistakes, only then will we be prepared to enter the stars to find new worlds and our brothers in the cosmos." 
J.M

   ORGANISM ON MOONS

As we know, so far there are three moons in the solar system that may be potentially suitable for life, these are Europa, Enceladus and Triton which orbit planets such as Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, these lunar worlds share almost the same characteristics and behaviors as They occur here on Earth, under the ocean floor in the abyssal regions where the temperatures are very low since not even a ray of sunlight reaches it, which means that the animals that live in this habitat have to live under these conditions. . The same happens with these icy bodies that share very common characteristics, such as the chemical substances that cause hydrothermal vents, which expel gases and other elements responsible for being the main components for life. These satellites may have the capacity to house everything from microbes to complex organisms which will have to adapt to an environment of total darkness. Therefore, these organisms may have bioluminescent invertebrate bodies that allow them to be visible in the darkness of the ocean, their survival does not exist. It would be a problem since these animals would be protected by a thick crust of ice that would separate the sea from the vacuum of space, thus being a type of atmosphere that would protect these species from radiation and cosmic rays.

Perhaps right now life could be just around the corner in our cosmic neighborhood, in the solar system, the three candidate satellites for life mean that the possibilities have increased which makes it increasingly more likely to at least find organisms swimming in the seas under the crusts of Europa, Enceladus and Triton; something that seems so mysterious and intriguing to me is there, waiting to be discovered, the discovery of life is just a thread away from our curiosity to find it". 
J.M